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THE GRAY

PHANTOM’S RETURN

By HERMAN LANDON

Author of

“The Gray Phantom”

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

Published by arrangement with W. J. Watt & Company

Printed in U. S. A.

W. J. WATT & COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

To Pal

THE GRAY PHANTOM’S RETURN

CHAPTER I—FROM DYING LIPS

Patrolman Joshua Pinto, walking his beat at two o’clock in the morning, hummed a joyless tune as he turned off the Bowery and swung into East Houston Street. It was a wet night, with a raw wind sweeping around the street corners, and Pinto walked along with an air of dogged persistence, as if trying to make the best of a disagreeable duty. His heavy and somewhat florid features were expressionless. For all that his face indicated, he might have been thinking that it was a fine night for a murder, or wishing that he was in plain clothes instead of uniform, or picturing himself in his cozy home playing with his baby, whose lusty “da-da’s” and “goo-goo’s” he was pleased to interpret as wonderful linguistic achievements.

Perhaps it was nothing but instinct that caused him to slow down his pace as he passed a squatty and rather dilapidated building in the middle of the block. So far as appearances went, it did not differ greatly from its drab and unprepossessing neighbors, yet Pinto cast a sharp glance at the ground-floor window, which bore a lettered sign proclaiming that the premises were occupied by Sylvanus Gage, dealer in pipes, tobacco, and cigars. As if the building had cast a spell of gloom upon him, the patrolman ceased his humming, and his lips were set in a tight line as he proceeded down the block.

Being an ambitious and hard-working officer, Pinto made it a practice to cultivate the acquaintance of as many as possible of the people living along his beat. He knew Sylvanus Gage, a thin, stoop-shouldered man with a flowing beard, a black cap adorning his bald skull, and mild blue eyes that had a habit of gazing lugubriously at the world through thick lenses rimmed with tarnished gold. Despite his patriarchal appearance, he was reputed to be using his tobacco business as a cloak for a flourishing traffic in stolen goods. So deftly did the old man manage his illicit enterprises that the police, though morally certain of their facts, had never been able to produce any evidence against him. Little was known of his housekeeper, a sour and sharp-tongued slattern of uncertain age, but there were those who suspected that she was not entirely innocent of complicity in her employer’s clandestine activities.

It may have been of this Pinto was thinking as he plodded along with the measured gait of the seasoned patrolman. The soggy sidewalks glistened in the light from the street-corner lamps, and here and there along the pavement water was forming in little pools. Most of the windows were dark and, save for an occasional shifty-eyed and furtively slinking pedestrian, the streets were deserted. Pinto halted for a moment to look at his watch, then quickened his steps, “pulled” the buff-colored box on the corner, and trudged on again.

Once more he was humming a tune. Each of the scattered prowlers he met was subjected to a critical scrutiny out of the corner of his eye. Now and then he dodged into a dark doorway and tried a lock. From time to time he glanced through the window of a store or shop. It was all a matter of habit with Joshua Pinto. For seven years he had pursued the same dull routine, varied only by an occasional transfer to another part of the city, or by a change from night to day duty, or vice versa. He had broken up a few nocturnal street brawls, now and then he had foiled the designs of a second-story artisan, and on two or three occasions he had caught a safe-blower red-handed, but nothing very exciting had ever happened to him.

On this particular night, however, an acute observer might have noticed an air of disquietude about Officer Pinto. There was the merest hint of uneasiness in the way he twirled his nightstick as he walked along, in the intensified alertness with which he inspected the occasional passers-by, in the quick and somewhat nervous glances he cast up and down the shabby streets. Likely as not the rain and the wind, together with the gloom pervading the district, were responsible for his state of mind, and possibly his physical discomfort was aggravated by a premonition—though Pinto himself would have called it a “hunch”—that a tragic event was soon to enliven the tedium of his existence.

Again his footsteps dragged as once more he strolled past the establishment of Sylvanus Gage. The building was dark and still, like most of the others in the block, yet something prompted Pinto to cast a suspicious glance at the door and windows, as if he sensed an omen in the shadows clinging to the wall.

He stopped abruptly as a door slammed and a shrill feminine voice called his name. A woman, scantily dressed and with loosened hair fluttering in the wind, was hurrying toward him with excited gestures.

“Officer!” She clutched his sleeve and pointed toward the tobacco shop. “There—hurry!”

The patrolman’s eyes followed her pointing finger. A second-story window opened above their heads and a frowsy person, disturbed by the woman’s harsh voice, looked down into the street. Pinto regarded the speaker with apparent unconcern, recognizing the housekeeper of Sylvanus Gage. Another window opened across the street, and a second face looked down on them.

Officer Pinto, schooled by previous experiences with overexcited females, casually inquired what might be the matter.

“Matter!” retorted the woman. “Murder—that’s what’s the matter. Why don’t you get a move on?”

Pinto permitted himself to be led along. The driver of a milk wagon halted his nag to watch the commotion. The woman, jabbering and shivering, opened the door of the tobacco store, pushed the officer inside and switched on the light above the counter.

“There!” She pointed at a door in the rear of the dingy shop. “He—Mr. Gage—sleeps back there.”

“Well, what of it?” An impatient look cloaked Pinto’s real feelings. “He’s got to sleep some place, ain’t he?”

The woman’s eyes blazed. “You stand there handing out sass while he—he may be dying back there.” Trying to steady herself, she gathered up the folds of the tattered robe she wore. “My room’s right above his,” she explained. “A few moments ago I jumped out of bed, thinking I’d heard a sound.”

“A sound, eh? This town is chockfull of them things.” Pinto leveled an uneasy glance at the door in the rear. “What kind of sound was it you thought you heard?”

“What kind of sound! You ain’t paid for asking fool questions, Officer Pinto. All day long I felt in my bones that something awful was going to happen, and when that noise woke me up I was scared stiff. I grabbed a few clothes and ran down here, but the door to Mr. Gage’s room was bolted on the inside. He always shoots the bolt before he goes to bed. I knocked, but not a sound came from the inside. Then I shouted loud enough to raise the dead, but——”

“Your boss is hard of hearing, ain’t he?”

“A little. Say, why don’t you do something?”

Pinto walked to the outer door, shooed away a knot of curious spectators, then sauntered back to where the woman stood. There was a supercilious grin on his lips, but deep in his eyes lurked an uneasy gleam.

“So you’ve been feeling in your bones that something awful was going to happen,” he gibingly observed. “Then you hear a noise, and right away you yell murder. You’ve got some imagination, you have. I ain’t going to break in on a sleeping man just because your bones feel funny. Mine do, too, once in a while, but I don’t make any fuss about it. No, sir-ee! You might as well trot back to bed.”

The woman pulled at the folds of her robe. “I haven’t told you all yet.” She spoke fast and low, gazing fixedly at the door in the rear. “Yesterday afternoon Mr. Gage got a letter from—from a party he’s got good reason to be scared of. He hadn’t heard from him in years, and he’d been hoping he was rid of him for good. Well, I was watching him while he read the letter, and I saw him turn white as a sheet. Later, while he was out to lunch, I went to his desk and read the letter. I was just that curious. It told Mr. Gage that the writer would call on him inside forty-eight hours.”

“Was that all?”

“All but the name at the bottom—and the name was the main thing.”

“Eh?”

“It was the name of the man Mr. Gage has been afraid of all these years. When I saw that name at the bottom of the note I felt a chill all over. Say,” raising her voice, “why don’t you break in that door?”

Pinto stroked his chin, as if strongly impressed by what the woman had told him. Another group of spectators had gathered at the entrance, and he gruffly ordered them to disperse. Then he faced the inner door, turned the knob, pushed. The door did not yield, and he looked back over his shoulder.

“Whose name was signed to the note?” he demanded.

A look of awe crossed the housekeeper’s face. She raised a bony arm and steadied herself against the counter. A grayish pallor had suffused her shriveled features.

“I—I can’t tell you,” she whispered. “I mustn’t. Hurry—for Heaven’s sake!”

Something of her excitement seemed to have been communicated to Pinto, but even now he appeared loath to attack the door.

“If your boss was so all-fired scared of the guy that sent him the note, why didn’t he call up the police?” he queried suspiciously. Then a look of comprehension dawned in his face. “I guess, though, that he wasn’t very anxious to have the department butt into his affairs, and maybe he thought the other fellow’s bite was worse’n his bark. Well, here goes.”

He stepped back a few paces, squared his shoulders for action, then hurled his massive figure against the door. The woman stood rigid, straining forward a little, yet holding her hands before her face as if dreading the sight that might meet her eyes. Again and again Pinto flung his body against the door, and finally, with a crash and a long splintering sound, it flew open, precipitating him headlong into the inner room.

A queer sound rose in the woman’s throat and she lowered her hands. She made as if to follow the policeman, but something held her back. From where she stood, staring through the doorway, she could see that the inner room was dark, and she heard the policeman’s grunts and mutterings as he struggled to regain his feet. Then came an interval of silence, broken only by groping footfalls, and presently a light appeared in the rear. Pinto had found the electric switch.

The housekeeper shuddered as an exclamation issued from the other room. Evidently the officer had discovered something. Crouching in front of the counter, she strained her ears, listening. Pinto was speaking in low, quick accents, but she could not make out the words, and she heard no answering voice.

Finally, Pinto came out. His face was a little white and his lips were set in a tight line.

“He’s dead,” he declared.

The woman shrank back against the counter. “Murdered?”

The officer bawled a command to the neck-craning group at the entrance to stand back. Without answering the housekeeper’s question, he looked quickly about the store till he spied a telephone on a shelf behind the counter. The woman listened abstractedly as he called a number and spoke a few words into the transmitter. Then he stepped out from behind the counter and faced her.

“Your boss is lying on the floor in there,” he announced, jerking his huge head toward the inner room, “with a knife wound in his chest. He was breathing his last just as I got to him.”

The housekeeper jerked herself up, a look of sullen passion in her blanched face. “Breathing his last, was he?” Her voice was loud and shrill. “Then he wasn’t dead yet! If you’d hurried, as I told you to, we might have saved his life. I’ll report you for this, Officer Pinto.”

“Cut that stuff! Nothing could have saved him. He was too far gone. Say,” and Pinto bored his sharp eyes into her twitching face, “what name was signed to that letter?”

Twice she opened her lips to speak, but no words came.

“Out with it! You’ve got to tell me now.”

The woman swallowed. “Why do you want to know?” she asked faintly.

“I’ve got a reason. Just as Gage was drawing his last breath, I got down beside him and asked him if he could tell me who stabbed him. I guess he read my lips; anyhow, he was able to whisper a name. I want to know if it jibes with the name signed to the letter Gage got yesterday.”

“Well, then”—she pressed her hands against her breast—“the name on the letter was the Gray Phantom’s.”

Pinto ejaculated hoarsely.

“It jibes, all right!” he declared.

CHAPTER II—THE MISSING BAUBLE

Just then a youngish man with a slouching gait and a dead cigar between his teeth pushed through the little knot of spectators at the entrance and leveled a mildly inquisitive glance at Pinto and the housekeeper.

The patrolman, after introducing the new arrival as Lieutenant Culligore of the detective bureau, told briefly what he had discovered.

Culligore doffed his dripping raincoat and banged his soggy slouch hat against the counter. His dull face and sluggish manners gave the impression that he was never quite awake, but now and then a furtive little gleam in his cinnamon-colored eyes betrayed a saving sense of humor. He seemed unimpressed until Pinto reached that point in his story where the dying man had told the name of his assailant. Then Culligore curled up his lip against the tip of his nose, as was his habit when interested in something, and motioned the patrolman to follow him into the inner room.

There was an indefinable air about the chamber that vaguely suggested the abode of one whose life is hidden from the world. The ragged carpet and the ancient wall paper were of neutral tones, and the atmosphere was stale and oppressive, as if seldom freshened by sun or wind. Lieutenant Culligore’s drowsily blinking eyes traveled over the scene, yet he appeared to see nothing. The safe in a corner seemed rather too large for the modest requirements of a tobacconist. Near by stood an ink-stained writing desk and a chair. The clothing on the narrow iron cot looked as though the occupant, suddenly disturbed in his sleep, had sprung from it in a hurry.

In the center of the room lay a curiously twisted figure, garbed in pajamas of pink flannel. Over the heart was a dull stain, and the right arm lay across the chest in a manner hinting that the dead man had used his last ounce of strength to ward off a blow. One of the legs was drawn up almost to the abdomen, and the eyes were fixed on the ceiling in a glassy stare.

“Well, Pinto?” Culligore looked as though he expected the patrolman to do the necessary thinking.

“The corpse told me the Gray Phantom did it,” said Pinto in a tone of finality. “Don’t you think we’d better start a general alarm, sir?”

“Corpses are sometimes mistaken, Pinto.” The lieutenant fumbled for a match and slowly kindled his cigar. “I’ll bet a pair of pink socks that the Phantom had nothing to do with this. The Phantom always fought clean. I’d hate like blue blazes to think that he pulled off this job.”

Pinto scowled a little, as if he couldn’t quite understand why Culligore should reject an easy solution of the mystery when it came to him ready-made.

“By the way,” and Culligore fixed an indolent eye on the electric fixture above the desk, “was the light on or off when you broke in?”

“It was off, sir. I turned it on myself.”

Culligore thought for a moment. “Well, that doesn’t mean much. The murderer might have switched it off before he made his get-away, or the room might have been dark all the time. I’d give a good smoke to know whether the murder was done in the light or the dark.”

Pinto’s eyes widened inquiringly.

“You see, Pinto, if the light was on we can take it for granted Gage saw the murderer’s face. If the room was dark, then he was just guessing when he told you it was the Phantom. It would have been a natural guess, too, for he would be very apt to suppose that the murderer was the man who had sent him the threatening letter. Since we can’t know whether Gage was stabbed in the light or the dark, we’d better forget what he told you and take a fresh start.” His eyes flitted about the room, and a flicker of interest appeared in their depths. “How do you suppose the murderer got out, Pinto?”

The patrolman looked significantly at the single window in the room. Culligore took a spiral tape measure from the little black box he always carried when at work on a homicide case and measured the width of the narrow sash.

“Too small,” he declared. “You’d have to yank in your belt several notches before you could crawl through a window of this size, Pinto. Anyhow, it’s latched from the inside.”

A look of perplexity in his reddish face, Pinto turned to the door. He looked a bit dazed as he noticed the damage he had wrought in forcing it. One of the panels was cracked in the center, and the slot in which the bolt had rested had been torn out of the frame.

“You see, Pinto.” There was a grin on Culligore’s lips. “The murderer couldn’t have got out of the window, because it’s much too small, and he couldn’t have walked out through the door, because it was bolted from the inside. There’s no transom, so he could not have adjusted the bolt from the other side. Nobody has yet figured out a way of passing through a door or window and leaving it bolted on the inside.”

Pinto stared at the door, at the window, and finally at Culligore. The problem seemed beyond him. Then he took his baton and, tapping as he went, explored every square foot of floor and walls, but no hollow sounds betrayed the presence of a hidden opening. He shook his head in a flabbergasted way.

“It’s possible, of course,” suggested the lieutenant, “that the murderer was still in the room when you broke in. He might have made his get-away in the dark while you were hunting for the light switch.”

“The housekeeper would have seen him,” Pinto pointed out. “She was standing just outside. And there was a crowd at the entrance. Say,” and a startled look crossed his face, “do you suppose Gage killed himself?”

“That would be an easy solution, all right. But, if he did, what was his idea in telling you that the Phantom had done it? And I don’t see any knife around. Gage wouldn’t have had the strength to pull it out of the wound, and, even if he had, how did he dispose of it? No, Pinto, Gage was murdered, and—hang it all!—it’s beginning to look as though the Phantom did it.”

“But you just said——”

“All I’m saying now is that it’s beginning to look as if the Phantom had had a hand in it. Things aren’t always what they seem, you know. I’m not taking much stock in what Gage told you just before he died. There are other reasons. One of them is the size of that window. Another is the fact that the door was bolted on the inside. Together they show that the man who committed this murder accomplished something of a miracle in getting out of the room. The Phantom is the only man I know who can do that sort of thing.”

He grinned sheepishly, as if conscious of having said something that sounded extravagant.

“Stunts like that are the Phantom’s long suit,” he went on. “He likes to throw dust in the eyes of the police and keep everybody guessing. But he was always a gentlemanly rascal, and it takes something besides a bolted door and a window latched on the inside to make me believe he has gotten down to dirty work. Wish the medical examiner would hurry up.”

He took a cover from the cot and threw it over the upper part of the body. A chance glance toward the door made him pause. Just across the threshold, with hands clasped across her breast and eyes fixed rigidly on the lifeless heap on the floor, stood the housekeeper. She awoke with a start from her reverie as she felt the lieutenant’s steady gaze on her face, and she shrank back a step. With a puckering of the brows, Culligore turned away. His eyes fell on the safe.

A pull at the knob told him it was locked. He took a magnifying lens from his kit and carefully examined the surface. Then, with a shake of the head signifying he had found no finger prints, he crooked his index finger at the housekeeper. She advanced reluctantly, and Culligore studied her with a sidelong glance.

“You needn’t talk unless you want to,” he said gently. “The department isn’t offering you any immunity. We’ve known for some time that Gage was running a fence, though we never got the goods on him.”

The woman, standing in a crouching attitude and studiously avoiding Culligore’s gaze, swept a tress of moist gray hair from her forehead.

“We’ve also suspected that you have been in cahoots with him,” continued the lieutenant in casual tones. “Oh, don’t get scared. We won’t go into that just now. All I want is that we understand each other.”

The woman raised her head and looked straight at Officer Pinto, and there was a hint of dread in her eyes as their glances met. A puzzled frown crossed Culligore’s face as he noticed the strange exchange of glances; then he pointed to the safe.

“Know how to open it?”

The housekeeper shook her head. “Mr. Gage kept only cheap junk in it, anyhow. All he used it for was a blind.”

“A blind?”

“He had to keep a lot of valuables in the house all the time, and he was always afraid of burglars. He kept a lot of phony stuff in the safe, thinking if burglars found it they might be fooled and not look any further.”

“Ah! Not a bad idea. Where did he keep the real stuff?”

The woman hesitated for a moment; then, with a quick gesture, she pointed to the old writing desk.

“Gage was a shrewd one,” observed the lieutenant. “With a safe in the room, nobody would think of looking for valuables in a broken-down desk. Now,” drawing a little closer to the woman and trying to catch her shifty eyes, “I wish you would tell us who killed him. I think you know.”

A tremor passed over the woman’s ashen face, and she fixed Pinto with a look that caused the lieutenant to lift his brows in perplexity. Finally, she pointed a finger at the patrolman.

“You heard what he said, didn’t you? Mr. Gage told him the Gray Phantom did it. Isn’t that enough?”

Culligore regarded her narrowly, as if sensing an attempt at evasion in what she had just said. Then he nodded and seemed to be searching his memory.

“Let me see—Gage and the Phantom had some kind of row a few years back?”

The housekeeper’s “Yes” was scarcely audible.

“What was it about?”

Her lips curled in scorn. “That’s what I could never understand. They were quarreling like two overgrown boys over a piece of green rock. Imitation jade was what Mr. Gage called it. I never got the story straight, but it seems the Phantom had been carrying it around as a kind of keepsake for years. He lost it finally, and somehow it got into Mr. Gage’s hands. The Phantom wanted it back, but Mr. Gage was just stubborn enough to hang on to it. They had an awful rumpus, and I think the Phantom threatened to get Mr. Gage some day.”

“All that fuss about a piece of phony jade? The Phantom must have had some particular reason for wanting it back. What was it shaped like?”

“It was a funny kind of cross, with eight tips to it.”

“A Maltese cross, maybe.” Lieutenant Culligore whistled softly. “The Phantom’s a queer cuss. Likely as not he thought more of that piece of imitation jade than most people would of a thousand dollars. What I don’t see is why Gage wouldn’t give it up. Unless,” he added with a shrewd grin, “he knew how badly the Phantom wanted it and hoped to make him cough up some real dough for it. Wasn’t that it?”

A shrug was the housekeeper’s only response.

“And the Phantom, of course, balked at the idea of paying good money for his own property. But it seems Gage would have given it up when he saw that it was putting his life in danger. I suppose, though, he thought the Phantom was only bluffing. He didn’t believe anybody would commit a murder over a thing that could be bought for a few cents.”

Again the housekeeper shot Pinto a queer glance. “If you don’t want me any more, I think I’ll——”

“Just a moment,” interrupted Culligore. “I want you to show me the letter Gage got yesterday.”

With a sullen gesture she stepped to the desk, fumbled for a few moments among the drawers, then drew forth a letter and handed it to the lieutenant. Culligore examined the envelope and the superscription under the light, then pulled out the enclosure.

“‘The Gray Phantom neither forgives nor forgets,’” he read aloud. “Short and to the point. Now let’s have a look at the Maltese cross. But wait—here’s the medical examiner. You’re late, doc.”

“Car broke down.” The examiner, a thickset, bearded, crisp-mannered individual, put a few questions to Culligore and Pinto, then uncovered the body, explored the region of the wound with an expert touch, and finally jotted down a few notes in a red-covered book. As he rose from his kneeling position, the lieutenant gave him a signal out of the corner of his eye, and the two men left the room together.

“Just one question, doc.” Culligore spoke in low tones, as if anxious that Pinto and the housekeeper should not hear. “About that wound. How long did Gage live after he was stabbed?”

“Not very long.”

“Long enough to tell Pinto the name of the man who stabbed him?”

The examiner looked startled. “Yes, in all probability. Say, you don’t suspect that cop in there of——”

“Not after what you’ve told me.” Culligore wheeled on his heels and re-entered the inner room. His upper lip brushed the tip of his nose, signifying he had learned something interesting. Pinto was replacing the cover over the body, while the housekeeper, standing a few paces away, was regarding him with a fixed, inscrutable look.

“Now let’s see the Maltese cross,” directed the lieutenant.

The woman jerked herself up. Her eyes held a defiant gleam, but it died away quickly. With evident reluctance she approached the desk and pointed.

“There’s a hidden drawer back there in the corner,” she announced. “I don’t know how to open it. You’ll have to find that out for yourself.”

Culligore, after looking in vain for a concealed spring, took a small tool from his kit. To locate the drawer without the woman’s help would have been a difficult task, for it was ingeniously hidden in an apparently solid portion of the desk. With a few deft twists and jerks he forced it open and poured out the contents, consisting of a great number of small objects wrapped in tissue paper. Each of the little wads contained a diamond. Unwrapping one after another, Culligore gathered them in a glittering heap on the desk. The stones varied in size and brilliancy. Occasionally he raised one of them to the light and inspected it keenly, satisfying himself of its genuineness.

“Some eye-teasers!” he muttered. “But where’s the Maltese cross?”

The housekeeper’s face went blank. She stared at the diamonds, then at the empty drawer.

“It was there day before yesterday,” she declared. “Mr. Gage showed it to me.”

There was an odd tension in the lieutenant’s manner. “Did the Phantom know about the secret drawer and how to open it?”

The woman, one hand clutching the edge of the desk, seemed to ponder. “I don’t know. He might have. The Phantom called on Mr. Gage several times after they started quarreling. But——”

“Well, it doesn’t matter.” There was a strain of suppressed disappointment in Culligore’s tones, and his face hinted that an illusion was slipping away from him. “It looks as though the thing was settled. The Gray Phantom is the only man I know who would pass up some fifty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds after taking the trouble to steal a gewgaw worth about two bits.”

With dragging gait he left the room, stepped behind the counter outside, and spoke into the telephone. In a few moments now the alarm would go out and a thousand eyes would be searching for the Gray Phantom. Culligore, tarrying for a little after he had hung up the receiver, looked as though he were in a mood to quarrel with his duty and with the facts staring him in the face. Then he shrugged, as if to banish regrets of which he was half ashamed, and his face bore a look of dogged determination when he stepped back into the bedroom.

“We’ll get him,” he announced with grim assurance. “Inside fifteen minutes there’ll be a net thrown around this old town so tight a mouse couldn’t wriggle through.”

He picked up his hat and kit, and just then his eyes fell on the housekeeper’s face. In vain he exercised his wits to interpret the sly gaze with which she was fixing Patrolman Pinto.

Did it mean fear, suspicion, horror, hate, or all four?

CHAPTER III—BLUE OR GRAY?

Cuthbert Vanardy was conscious of a disquieting tension in the air. The long shadows cast by the trees that stood in clusters on the lawn of Sea-Glimpse impressed him as sinister harbingers of coming events. The wind had a raw edge, and it produced a dolorous melody as it went moaning over the landscape. Vanardy recognized the vague sense of depression and foreboding he experienced as he walked down the path that wound in and out among flower beds and parterres of shrubbery. He had noticed it often in the past, and always on the eve of some tragic event.

He could not understand, for of late his life had fallen into serene and humdrum lines, and there had been no hint of disturbing occurrences. His horticultural experiments had kept him well occupied, and he had derived a great deal of satisfaction from the favorable comments which the products of his gardens had created among experts at the horticultural expositions in New York and Boston, as well as from the speculations aroused concerning the identity of the anonymous exhibitor, who for private reasons preferred to remain unknown. Nothing of an exciting nature had happened in several months, and, but for his intangible misgivings, there was no sign of an interruption to his tranquil life.

On the veranda he stopped and looked back into the gathering dusk. The trees and shrubs, colored and distorted by his restless imagination, took on weird contours and seemed to assume life and motion. No doubt, he told himself, the premonitions he had felt of late were also the products of his fancy. They could be nothing else, for he had severed all the links connecting him with the old life. Time had quieted all the dreams and impulses of his former self. He smiled as it occurred to him that his highest ambition at the present moment was to produce a gray orchid.

It was only a whim, a diversion from more serious work, but the novelty of the experiment, as well as the difficulties in the way, appealed to him. By intricate cross-breeding he was gradually developing an orchid of a dim, mystic gray, his favorite color. When once evolved, the hybrid should be known as the Phantom Orchid. It would be the living symbol of whatever had been good in his other self, the Gray Phantom.

His thoughts went back to those other days when he had gone, like a swaggering Robin Hood, from one stupendous adventure to another. Even his bitterest enemies, and there had been many of them, had never accused the Gray Phantom of being actuated by considerations of sordid gain. The public had gasped and the police muttered maledictions as he gratified his thirst for thrills and excitement, always playing the game in strict accord with his code and invariably planning his exploits so that his victims were villains of a far blacker dye than he. Always his left hand had tossed away what his right hand had plucked. Hospitals, orphan asylums and other philanthropic organizations became the recipients of donations that were never traced to their source. Princely and mysterious gifts poured into garrets and hovels in a way that caused simple-minded people to believe in a return of the day of miracles.

The Gray Phantom, through it all, maintained an elusiveness that completely baffled the police and clothed his identity in a glamorous haze. So astounding were his performances that there were those who asked themselves whether he was not practicing black magic. Once, in the early days of his career, he fell into the clutches of the police, satisfying the superstitious ones that he was really a being of flesh and blood, but an amazing escape a few days later revived the gossip of a rogue who was in collusion with evil spirits. The Phantom was greatly amused, and spurred his energies to even more dizzying flights, but there were times when a softer mood came upon him, and then he wondered why his restless spirit could not have found a different outlet. Perhaps the reason was to be found in the remote and dimly remembered past when, friendless and homeless, he had derived his philosophy of life from thieving urchins and night-prowling gangsters.

The years passed, and the Gray Phantom’s adventures made his sobriquet known from coast to coast, but gradually the life he was leading began to pall on him. His exploits no longer gave him the thrills he craved, and he began to search, at first blindly and haltingly, for a more satisfying way of unleashing his boundless energies. There came long lapses between his adventures, and finally it began to be rumored that the Gray Phantom had gone into retirement with his accumulated treasures, for no one guessed that he had flung away his spoils as fast as he garnered them in. Nobody understood the true reason for the change that had come over him, and the Phantom least of all.

He often wondered at the obscure impulses that had impelled him to seek seclusion at Sea-Glimpse, a narrow stretch of wooded land surrounded on three sides by jagged coast line and in the rear by forest and farm land. He could not understand them, except that his new mode of life gave him a sense of pleasing remoteness from things he wished to forget, and at times he thought he would be content to spend the rest of his days in this secluded nook, secure from intrusion and free to devote himself to his hobby and his books.

But to-night a vague unrest was upon him. He peered into the shadows, constantly growing longer and darker, and it seemed as if the ghostly figures of his past were reaching out for him. Perhaps, there was still a forgotten link or two that bound him to the old life. He shrugged, as if to banish disquieting thoughts, and entered the house. Stepping into the library, he lighted his reading lamp and took a work on horticulture from the shelf. There was a problem in connection with the gray orchid that he had not yet been able to work out satisfactorily. He sat down and opened the book, but the print danced and blurred beneath his eyes. A woman’s face appeared out of nowhere, the same face that had haunted him in idle moments for months. His mental picture was dim and fragmentary, and he could not distinctly remember even the color of the hair or whether the eyes were blue or gray, but the vision pursued him with the persistence of a haunting scent or a strain from an old familiar song.

Helen Hardwick and he had shared several adventures and perils together. Only a few months had elapsed since he rescued her from the clutches of the mysterious “Mr. Shei,” the leader of an arch-conspiracy which the Phantom had frustrated. About a year before that he had emerged from his retreat for long enough to restore to her father, curator of the Cosmopolitan Museum, a collection of Assyrian antiques that Hardwick had spent the best years of his life in gathering, and which had been stolen by a criminal organization headed by the Phantom’s old-time enemy and rival, “The Duke.” To Vanardy the achievement had meant little more than a pleasing diversion and an opportunity to humiliate a man whose personality and methods he abhorred, and Helen Hardwick’s gratitude had made him feel that she was giving him the accolade of an undeserved knightship. She had come to Sea-Glimpse to thank him, and her parting glance and smile were still vivid in his recollection. He often glanced dreamily at the spot where she had stood when for an instant her hand lingered within his. With the blood pounding against his temples, he had exerted all his power of will to restrain himself from calling her back. There were times when he regretted having let her go like that, without hope of seeing her again, but in his soberer moments he saw the inevitableness of the outcome. In the eyes of the world he was still an outlaw, and too great a gulf separated the Gray Phantom and Helen Hardwick. The memory of her eyes, warm, frank and bright, would be with him always. He had her to thank for the finest emotions he had ever experienced, and he would try to be content with that.

She seemed little more than a dream to him now, and even the dream was fragmentary. Again he thought it strange that he could not remember the color of her eyes or hair, and that little remained with him save a misty and tantalizing vision of loveliness.

He closed the book and passed to the window. The moon had risen, bathing the narrow strip of water visible between the birches and hemlocks in a white mist. The house, which Vanardy had restored from the dilapidated condition in which he had found it, was silent save for an occasional creaking of old timbers. Clifford Wade, once his chief lieutenant and now the major-domo of his little household, had gone to the village for the mail. The Phantom stood lost in reflections, his deep gray eyes soft and luminous. On occasion they could sting and stab like points of steel, but in repose they were the eyes of a dreamer. The nostrils were full and sensitive, and the arch of the lips was partly obscured by a short-cropped beard that would have made him hard to recognize from his photograph in a revolving case at police headquarters.

He turned as a knock sounded on the door. A fat man stepped through the door, groaning and puffing as if the task of carrying his huge body through life were the bane of his existence. Wade, the ostensible owner of Sea-Glimpse—for its real master was seldom seen beyond the boundaries of the estate—placed a bundle of mail on the table, gave his master a long-suffering look, and withdrew.

With a listless air Vanardy glanced at the mail and began to unfold the newspapers. He ran his eyes over the headlines, and a caption, blacker and larger than the rest, caught his languid attention. He stared at it for moments, as if his brain were unable to absorb its meaning. Slowly and dazedly he mumbled the words:

DYING MAN ACCUSES THE GRAY PHANTOM

Presently his quickening eye was running down the column of type. It was a lurid and highly colored account of the murder of Sylvanus Gage, a crime said by the police to be one of the strangest on record. Headquarters detectives confessed themselves baffled by several of the circumstances, and especially by the fact that the murderer seemed to have accomplished the apparently impossible feat of making his escape through a door which had been found bolted on the inside when the police reached the scene.

The murder, it was stated, would probably have gone down in the annals of crime as an unsolved mystery but for the fact that the dying man had whispered the name of his assailant to Patrolman Pinto, who had been summoned to the scene by the housekeeper, Mrs. Mary Trippe, after the latter had been disturbed by a mysterious sound. The name mentioned by the victim was that of Cuthbert Vanardy, known internationally as the Gray Phantom and regarded by the police as one of the most ingenious criminals of modern times.

However, the account went on, the Gray Phantom’s guilt would have been clearly established even without his victim’s dying statement. It had been learned that for some years a feud had existed between the two men and that the Gray Phantom had threatened to take his enemy’s life. The total absence of finger prints and other tangible clews strongly suggested that the deed could have been perpetrated only by a criminal in the Phantom’s class. The perplexing features added further proof of the Phantom’s guilt. Who else could have made his escape in such an inexplicable manner? Who but the Gray Phantom, who was known to be pursuing a criminal career for pleasure and excitement rather than for the profits he derived from it, would have left behind him a small fortune in perfect stones, taking nothing but a worthless curio?

These and other details Vanardy read with interest. He smiled as he reached the concluding paragraph, stating that a countrywide search for the murderer was in progress and that the police confidently expected to make an arrest within twenty-four hours. He glanced at the accompanying likeness of himself, made from a photograph taken in the early stages of his career.

“What drivel!” he exclaimed, tossing the paper aside. Then, one by one, he glanced through the other early editions of the New York evening newspapers. All featured the Gage murder on the first page, and all the accounts agreed in regard to essential details. In The Evening Sphere’s story of the crime, however, he detected a subtle difference. It presented the same array of damning facts, pointing straight to the inevitable conclusion of the Phantom’s guilt, yet, between the lines, he sensed an elusive quality that differentiated it from the others. He read it again, more slowly this time; and here and there, in an oddly twisted sentence or an ambiguous phrase, he caught a hint that the writer of the Sphere’s article entertained a secret doubt of the Phantom’s guilt.

The suggestion was so feeble, however, that a casual reader would scarcely have noticed it, and whatever doubts the writer may have felt were smothered under a mass of evidence pointing in the opposite direction. He threw the paper down with an air of disdain. Here, in this sheltered retreat, what the world thought of him was of no account. Serene in his seclusion, he could snap his fingers at its opinions and suspicions. He sat down at the piano, and a moment later his finely tapering fingers were flashing over the keys.

Suddenly, in the midst of one of his favorite arias, his hands began to falter. For a time he sat motionless, with lips tightening, gazing narrowly at the point where Helen Hardwick had stood at the moment when he held her hand. His face was grim and troubled, as if a disturbing thought had just occurred to him. He got up and with long strides passed to the desk, where he pressed a button.

“Wade,” he crisply announced when the fat man reappeared, “I am going to New York in the morning.”

Wade sat down, drawing a squeaky protest from an unoffending chair. “To New—New York?” he stammered.

“Exactly. Tell Dullah to pack my grip. I shall leave early, about the time you are getting your beauty sleep.”

Wade blinked his little eyes. “But why, boss?”

“Here’s the reason.” Vanardy handed him one of the papers he had been perusing, watching with an amused smile the flabbergasted look that came into the fat man’s face as he read. As he approached the end of the article, wheezy gasps and indignant mutters punctuated the reading.

“Rot!” he commented emphatically. “If I wasn’t a fat man I’d lick the editor of this sheet within an inch of his life. Why, you always played the game according to the code, boss. You never killed a man in all your life.”

“No, never.”

“And you were right here at Sea-Glimpse at the time the murder was done.”

“True enough. But I might have some difficulty proving it. Your own testimony wouldn’t be particularly impressive. Besides, there’s just enough of truth in the police theory to give color to the lies. It is true Gage and I quarreled, and I believe I once threatened to give the old skinflint a beating. It was a foolish wrangle, involving nothing but a cross made of imitation jade. I’d been wearing it attached to a chain around my neck as far back as I could remember. Who put it there I don’t know. Perhaps——”

“Your mother—maybe,” suggested Wade, slanting a searching gaze at Vanardy.

“I don’t know, Wade. You may be right. I remember neither father nor mother. All I know is that the cross seemed to be the only connecting link between my present and the past I couldn’t remember. I fought like mad when the street urchins and gangsters tried to take it away from me, and somehow, through thick and thin, I managed to cling to it. Then, one day about six years ago, I lost it. Probably the chain parted. Anyhow, in some mysterious manner the cross fell into Gage’s possession. I went to Gage and demanded it. He must have seen how anxious I was to recover it, for he put a stiff price on it. I was willing to pay—would have paid almost anything—but each time I began to count out the money Gage doubled his price. So it went on for years, and I admit I sometimes felt like strangling the old miser. But I never threatened to kill him and I never wrote the letter mentioned in the papers.”

“Somebody’s been doing some tall lying,” declared Wade irately. “If I wasn’t so fat I’d make the fellow that wrote this article eat his own words. But you should worry, boss. They can’t get away with it.”

“I am not so sure, Wade. Seems to me they’ve made out a fairly complete case against the Gray Phantom. The motive is substantial enough. There are enough mysterious circumstances to suggest that only the Phantom could have committed the crime. The fact that the murderer stole a cheap trinket and left fifty thousand dollars’ worth of real diamonds behind him is rather impressive. And you mustn’t forget that a little evidence against the Gray Phantom will go a long way with a jury.”

Wade, a picture of ponderous wrath, crumpled the newspaper in his huge fist. The fretful look in the small round eyes signified that his mind was grappling with a problem.

“The letter Gage got the day before the murder must have been forged,” he ventured at last.

“Of course; but it may have been done skillfully enough to deceive all but the keenest eye. Handwriting experts have been known to disagree in matters of that kind.”

The fat man reflected heavily. “Why didn’t Gage beat it for the tall woods when he got the letter?”

“Because the tall woods are full of ambushes. Likely as not the letter gave him a jolt at first. Then, upon giving it a sober second thought, he cooled down. His principal consideration was that the Gray Phantom had never been known to commit a murder, and that consequently the letter was either a joke or a bluff.”

“But he told the cop it was the Gray Phantom that stabbed him.”

“Naturally. A wound in the chest isn’t conducive to clear thinking. We may assume that the murderer approached his victim by stealth and that Gage never saw the man who struck him down. Under the circumstances it was natural enough for him to suppose that, after all, the Gray Phantom had carried out his threat. What else was he to think?”

An ominous rumble sounded in Wade’s expansive chest. “You’ve been framed, boss.”

Vanardy nodded. “And it doesn’t require a great deal of brilliance to figure out who engineered the frame-up. The Duke has the reputation of being a good hater.”

The fat man seemed startled. “But the Duke’s in stir,” he argued. “You sent him there yourself.”

“So I did.” A pleased smile lighted Vanardy’s features. “But two or three members of his gang were not present at the round-up, and I have received tips to the effect that they have been organizing a new crowd. I suppose the Duke has been communicating with them through underground channels and instructing them in regard to this frame-up. The Duke has sworn to get me, and undoubtedly this is his method of accomplishing his aim. He chose the mode of revenge which he thought would hurt me most.”

“If I wasn’t a fat man I would—” began Wade.

“Save your threats. The Duke is a crafty rascal, just as clever as he’s vindictive. That kind of a man makes a bad enemy. The only way to queer his game is to track down the man who did the crime. That’s why I am going to New York in the morning. The police will never find the culprit, for they are wasting their time and energies looking for the Gray Phantom. Therefore it’s up to me.”

A scowl deepened in Wade’s rubicund face. “The world must be coming to an end when the Gray Phantom turns detective. It’s the maddest, craziest thing you ever did yet, boss.”

“It will be quite an adventure.” Vanardy’s eyes twinkled.

“It’s too risky, boss. Why, every dick and harness bull and amateur sleuth on the American continent is on the lookout for you.”

“Very likely.”

“The police have enough on you to send you to the jug for a million years, even without the Sylvanus Gage job. And you can just bet the Duke’s gang will have their eyes peeled, watching their chance to lead you into a trap.”

“I suppose so.”

The fat man sighed. He knew from long experience that his chief, once his mind was made up, was impervious to pleas and arguments.

“Why don’t you just sit tight?” was his final attempt. “I don’t see what you’re worrying about. They’ll never find you here. Nobody knows where to look for you. You’re safe.”

“Sure of that?” Vanardy smiled queerly. “There’s one person who knows where to find me.”

A look of startled comprehension came into Wade’s face. “You mean the little queen who was so heart-broken because the Duke had stolen a lot of old Assyrian junk from her dad?”

“I mean Miss Helen Hardwick,” declared Vanardy stiffly. “I was fortunate in being able to recover the collection from the Duke and restore it to Mr. Hardwick.”

“She was sure easy on the eyes!” rhapsodized Wade, unrebuked. “But you let her slip away from you, after you’d stirred up most of the earth to dry her tears. I never got you on that deal boss. Why, if I hadn’t been a fat man——” He sighed and rolled wistful eyes at the ceiling.

Vanardy scowled, then laughed.

“Chuck the sentiment, you old clod-hopping hippo. As far as I know, Miss Hardwick is the only living person, outside our own circle, who is aware of my whereabouts.”

“Will she give you away?”

“It depends,” murmured Vanardy. “If she believes me guilty of murder she may consider it her duty to inform the police, and she would be absolutely right in doing so. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m starting for New York in a few hours to track down the murderer of Sylvanus Gage.”

Admiration clashed with anxiety in Wade’s face. “I get you, boss. You want to keep the Gray Phantom’s record clean. You don’t want any bloodstains on his name. You don’t want the world to think that you’ve committed a murder.”

An odd smile played about the Phantom’s lips. “Wrong, Wade. It goes against the grain to have a foul murder linked to one’s name, but it isn’t that. I’m not lying awake nights worrying about the world’s opinion. The only thing that troubles me is——” He broke off, and his eyes sought the spot where Helen Hardwick had stood.

“You needn’t say it, boss.” Wade’s voice was a trifle thick as he struggled out of the chair and gripped the other’s hand. “If I wasn’t a fat man I’d tag right along, but I guess I’d only be in the way. Good luck—and give my regards to the little wren.”

With slow, trundling strides he left the room. A moment later the door had closed behind him, and the Gray Phantom was alone. Once more, as he paced the floor, his eyes were soft and luminous. Suddenly he paused and bent a reverential look on the rug at his feet, as if he were standing in a hallowed spot.

“Blue or gray?” he mumbled.

CHAPTER IV—MR. ADAIR, OF BOSTON

“Roland Adair, Boston, Massachusetts.” It was thus the Gray Phantom inscribed the register at Hotel Pyramidion, while an affable clerk beamed approval on his athletic and well-groomed figure.

“What do you require, Mr. Adair?”

“Parlor, bedroom, and bath, with southern exposure, preferably above the sixth floor.”

The clerk, intuitively sensing that the new arrival was one accustomed to having his wishes complied with, glanced at his card index. “We have exactly what you want, Mr. Adair.”

“Good! I wish breakfast and the morning newspapers sent to my apartment at once.”

“It shall be done, Mr. Adair.” The clerk bowed debonairly, little suspecting that the new guest, who so unmistakably presented all the earmarks of a cultured and leisurely gentleman, was at this moment the most “wanted” man on the North American continent. The guest himself grinned in his short black beard while an elevator carried him to the ninth floor, and an acute observer would have gained the impression that he was bent upon an adventure hugely to his liking.

He ate his breakfast slowly and with keen relish, meanwhile glancing over the newspapers, which were still featuring the East Houston Street murder as the chief sensation. Nothing had as yet been discovered which threw the faintest light on the peculiar manner in which the slayer had left the scene of his crime, and it was regarded as doubtful whether this mysterious phase of the case would be cleared up until after the Gray Phantom’s arrest. It had been ascertained that the notorious criminal was not aboard any of the vessels that had sailed for foreign ports since the murder, so it was thought probable that the fugitive was still in the country, and it was confidently declared by police officials that the dragnet would gather him in before long.

The accounts in the various papers were substantially similar, but again the Phantom detected a faintly dissenting note in the Sphere’s article. It was so slight as to be scarcely discernible, but to the Phantom it signified a lurking doubt in the writer’s mind, and a suggestion that the Sphere’s reporter sensed a weak link in the chain of evidence.

“I’ll have a talk with the fellow,” he decided. “I might ask him to take dinner with me this evening. He may prove interesting.”

He finished his coffee and lighted a long, thin cigar, then passed to the window and watched the procession below. After his long and monotonous seclusion at Sea-Glimpse the life of the city acted as a gentle electric stimulant on his nerves. He glowed and tingled with sensations that had lain dormant during long months of tedium, and the strongest and raciest of these was a feeling of ever present danger.

The Gray Phantom did not deceive himself. His present adventure was by far the most hazardous of his career. On the one hand he was threatened by the nimble-witted man hunters of the police department, and on the other by the henchmen of the Duke. His only hope of safety lay in his subtler intelligence, which had seldom failed him in moments of danger, and the temporary protection afforded by his beard.

Luckily, the only photograph of him in existence, the one the newspapers had displayed on their front pages the morning after the murder, showed him smooth shaven. The beard, giving him a maturer and somewhat more professional appearance, afforded a thin and yet fairly satisfactory disguise, but it would be of scant use if by the slightest misstep or careless move he should attract suspicion to himself. In such an event, certain records filed away in the archives of the police would quickly establish his identity as the Gray Phantom. Nevertheless, he was pleased that the descriptions carried by the newspapers had made no mention of a beard.

There was a measure of safety, too, in the sheer audacity with which he was proceeding. The man hunters might look everywhere else, but they would scarcely expect to find their quarry living sumptuously at a first-class hotel. His free and easy mode of conduct, unmarked by the slightest effort at concealment, afforded a protection which he could not have found in the shabbiest hovel and under the most elaborate disguise.

Yet, despite all the safeguards his brain could invent, the situation was perilous enough to give the Gray Phantom all the excitement his nature craved. His pulses throbbed, and there was a keen sparkle in his eyes as he left the hotel and went out on the streets. The very air seemed charged with a quality that held him in a state of piquant suspense. The policemen appeared more alert than usual, and now and then snatches of conversation reached his ears from little groups at street corners and in doorways who were avidly discussing the Gage murder and the chances of the Gray Phantom being caught. At each subway entrance and elevated stairway loitered a seemingly slothful and impassive character whom his trained eye easily identified as a detective.

Chuckling softly in his beard, the Phantom walked on. No one seemed to suspect that the striking and faultlessly garbed figure that sauntered down the streets with such a carefree and easy stride, looking for all the world like a leisurely gentleman out for his morning constitutional, might be the object of one of the most thorough and far-reaching man hunts ever undertaken by the police. Occasionally he paused to inspect a window display, incidentally listening to a discussion in which his name was frequently mentioned. The East Houston Street murder, which under ordinary circumstances would have attracted but passing notice, had become a tremendous sensation because of the Gray Phantom’s supposed connection with it.

Gradually he veered off the crowded thoroughfares and entered into a maze of crooked, narrow, and squalid streets where housewives and children with dirt-streaked faces viewed his imposing figure with frank curiosity. After a glance at a corner sign he turned east, quickening his pace a little and scanning the numbers over the doorways as he proceeded. One of the buildings, a murky brick front with a funeral wreath hanging on the door and a tobacconist’s sign lettered across the ground-floor window, he regarded with more than casual interest.

“Sylvanus Gage, Dealer in Pipes, Tobacco, and Cigars,” he read in passing; then, after a moment’s hesitation, he pursued his eastward course, a thoughtful pucker between his eyes. He was trying to outline a course of procedure, a matter to which hitherto he had given scant attention, for the Phantom was the veriest tyro in the science of criminal investigation. It occurred to him that one of his first steps should be an inspection of the scene of the murder.

A few blocks farther east he turned into a once famous restaurant and ordered luncheon. He dallied over the dishes, smoked a cigar while he drank his coffee, and it was after three o’clock when he left the place and headed in the direction of the tobacco store. This time he paused in front of the establishment, looked through the window, and finding the interior deserted, resolutely rang the bell. Some time passed before the side door was opened by a flat-chested woman with sharp features and unkempt gray hair.

“What do you want?” she demanded sulkily, regarding the caller with oddly piercing eyes. “Can’t you see the store’s closed?”

The Phantom lifted his hat and smiled urbanely. “Sorry to intrude,” he murmured. “You are Mrs. Trippe, I believe?”

“Well, suppose I am?”

“The late Mr. Gage’s housekeeper?”

“What’s that to you?”

“I am Mr. Adair, of Boston,” explained the Phantom, unruffled by her churlish demeanor. He and the woman had met once or twice during his stormy interviews with Gage, but he felt sure she did not recognize him. “You may have heard of me as an amateur investigator of crime,” he went on easily. “I have established a modest reputation in that line. This morning I happened to read an account of Mr. Gage’s tragic death, and some of the circumstances impressed me as interesting. Could I trouble you to show me the room in which the crime was committed?”

His hand was in the act of extracting a bank note from his pocket, but he checked it in time, a sixth sense warning him that Mrs. Trippe might resent an attempt to grease her palm.

“I don’t see what you want to pester me for,” she muttered sullenly, fixing him with a look of obvious suspicion. “The police have almost worried the life out of me with their fool questions and carryings-on. The case is settled and there’s nothing more to investigate.”

“Sure of that, Mrs. Trippe?” He had detected a faint hesitancy in her speech and manner, and he was quick to take advantage of it. Incidentally he noticed that she had aged a great deal since he last saw her, and he doubted whether he should have recognized her if they had met by chance. “What about the murder’s manner of escape?” he added. “I understand that hasn’t been explained yet.”

“Well, he escaped, didn’t he? I don’t see that it makes any difference how he did it. The Gray Phantom always did things his own way. But,” after a few moments’ wavering, “you can come in and look around.”

Her abrupt acquiescence surprised him, and he guessed it was not wholly due to a desire to be obliging. He wondered, as he followed her through the store, whether her decision to admit him was not prompted by a wish to see what deductions he would make after inspecting the scene of the crime.

She opened the inner door, remarking that the damage wrought by Officer Pinto had been repaired a few hours after the murder and that the police department’s seal had been removed only a short while ago. The Phantom passed into the narrow chamber, only slightly altered in appearance since the time of his last visit. The realization that he was viewing the scene of a crime supposed to have been perpetrated by himself appealed strongly to his dramatic instinct, and the thought that at this moment the police were searching for him with a fine-toothed comb lent a touch of humor to the situation.

The woman stepped to the small window in the rear and raised the shade, then stationed herself at the door, peering at him out of wary, narrow-lidded eyes, as if intent on his slightest move. The Phantom glanced at the rickety desk at which Gage had sat while haggling over petty sums and figuring percentages to the fraction of a cent.

“I see one of the drawers has been forced open,” he remarked.

“Lieutenant Culligore did that,” explained the woman. “That was the drawer where Mr. Gage kept most of his valuables.”

“Including the Maltese cross,” the Phantom smilingly put in.

Mrs. Trippe nodded. “There’s a spring somewhere that opens and shuts it, but none of us could find it, and so Lieutenant Culligore had to break the drawer open.”

“Yet the cross was gone,” observed the Phantom, “and the drawer was intact when Lieutenant Culligore found it. That would seem to indicate that the murderer knew how to operate the spring.”

“Well, hasn’t the Phantom proved that he knows just about all there is to know?”

“I am sure the Phantom would feel highly complimented if he could hear you say that.” He smiled discreetly, realizing that here was another item of proof, for he was willing to wager that, though he had never seen Gage work the spring, he could have opened the drawer without laying violent hands upon it. He turned to the window, carefully examined the catch, then raised the lower half and endeavored to thrust his shoulders through the opening. The attempt satisfied him that even a smaller man than himself would have found it impossible to squeeze through.

That left only the door as a means of egress and ingress, and the door had been bolted on the inside when Officer Pinto arrived, which circumstance seemed to render it flatly impossible for the murderer to have escaped that way. He tried the lock and examined the stout bolt, then stepped through to the other side, closing the door behind him. A wrinkle of perplexity appeared above his eyes. Even the Phantom’s nimble wits could not devise a way of passing through the door and leaving it bolted on the inside. The feat did not seem feasible, and yet the murderer must have accomplished it. His face wore a frown as he reëntered the little chamber.

“Can’t figger it out, eh?” The housekeeper seemed to have read his mind. “Well, you needn’t try. The police did, and they had to give it up as a bad job. The Phantom has a cute little way with him, doing things so they can’t be explained.”

“And yet,” facing her squarely, “you don’t think the Phantom committed the murder?”

A scarcely perceptible shiver ran through her shrunken figure. “What else can I think?” she parried.

He shrugged his shoulders. The impression haunted him that she was not so sure of the Phantom’s guilt as she appeared. He ran his eyes over the floor, the walls, and the murky ceiling.

“And you needn’t try to find any hidden openings, either,” she told him, again reading his unspoken thoughts. “A bunch of headquarters detectives spent half a day tapping the walls and the ceiling and ripping up boards in the floor. The Phantom——”

The jangle of the bell at the outer door interrupted her, and she looked scowlingly toward the front of the store. “I guess that’s Officer Pinto,” she muttered. “He’s on night duty, but he’s been prowling around here most of the time since the murder, asking silly questions when he ought to be in bed.”

A hard, wary glitter appeared in the Phantom’s eyes as she left the room. In an instant he had scented danger.

CHAPTER V—DANGER

Coolly, though every nerve and muscle in his body were on the alert, the Phantom took a case from his pocket and lighted a cigarette. He stood face to face with a peril of a tangible and definite kind. The protecting beard was dependable only so long as he did not attract the attention of the police and invite a closer scrutiny. It would not for long deceive an officer whose training had made him habitually suspicious of appearances and who had been drilled in the art of seeing through disguises.

Voices came from the outer room, Mrs. Trippe’s surly tones clashing with the gruff accents of Officer Pinto. The Phantom felt a tingle of suspense. It was the kind of situation he would have thoroughly enjoyed but for the fact that in this instance he could not jeopardize his liberty without also endangering his purpose.

Footsteps approached, and presently a stocky figure, with the housekeeper hovering behind, stood framed in the doorway. The Phantom, smiling serenely, felt instant relief the moment he glanced at the heavy and somewhat reddish features, with the unimpressive jaw and the stolid look in the eyes. Pinto might be a faithful plodder and a dangerous adversary in a physical encounter, but it was plain that he possessed only ordinary intelligence.

“Well, who’re you?” bluntly demanded the officer.

It was the housekeeper who answered. “He says he is Mr.——What did you say your name was?”

“Mr. Adair, of Boston,” replied the Phantom with an air of superb tranquillity, adding the explanation he had already invented for Mrs. Trippe’s benefit. “Hope I’m not intruding,” he concluded.

Pinto stepped inside, his eyes fixed on the Phantom’s face in a hard stare. Then, by slow degrees, the churlish expression left his features and a slightly contemptuous grin took its place.

“You’re welcome,” he declared. “Go as far as you like. I s’pose you’re trying to dope out how the Phantom got out of the room. Well, believe me, you’ll have to do some tall thinking.”

The Phantom chuckled affably. Evidently Pinto had classified him as one of the harmless cranks who flock in the wake of the police whenever a mysterious crime has taken place.

“I was just discussing the problem with Mrs. Trippe,” he announced easily. “It’s a fascinating riddle. I infer it has gripped you, too, since you come here in civilian clothes while not on duty.”

“Well, I’ve been kidding myself along, thinking maybe I would find the solution.” Pinto’s face bore a sheepish look. “There’s got to be a solution somewhere, you know, and——”

“And it would be a feather in your cap if you were the one who found it first,” put in the Phantom genially. “Perhaps it would mean promotion, too—who knows? But has it occurred to you that the murderer’s exit is no more mysterious than his entrance? If he accomplished a miracle getting out, he also accomplished a miracle getting in.”

“The Phantom’s strong for the miracle stuff, all right. But it’s possible Gage himself let the murderer in. Maybe he expected somebody to call. Anyhow, we know the villain got in somehow. What I’d like to know is how he got out.”

The Phantom’s eyes had been on the floor, near the point where, according to the newspaper articles he had read, Gage’s body must have been found. Of a sudden he looked up, and the gaze he surprised in Pinto’s slyly peering eyes sent a tingle of apprehension through his body. He wondered whether the patrolman was as obtuse as he seemed.

“I understand,” he said without a tremor in his voice, “that you found the room dark upon breaking in. Couldn’t the murderer have slipped out while you were looking for the light switch?”

“Huh!” The contemptuous snort came from Mrs. Trippe, who, with arms crossed over her chest, stood in the rear of the room. “How could he, I’d like to know, with me standing right outside the door and a crowd of rubbernecks at the main entrance?”

The Phantom seemed to ponder. The theory he had just suggested did not seem at all plausible, and his only purpose in mentioning it had been to turn Pinto’s thoughts in a new direction.

“I’d swear the rascal wasn’t in the room when I broke in,” declared the patrolman with emphasis.

“And he couldn’t have got out before,” remarked the Phantom, with a grin. At the same moment he felt Mrs. Trippe’s eyes on his face. She was gazing at him as if his last remark had made a profound impression upon her. He sensed a new and baffling quality in the situation, something that just eluded his mental grasp, and he began to wonder whether the housekeeper did not know or suspect something which she had not yet told.

“The Phantom’s a devil,” observed Pinto, again slanting a queer glance at the other man. “Nobody of flesh and bone could pull off a stunt like this. Maybe some day he’ll tell us how he did it. He’ll be roped in before long. Say,” with a forced laugh, “wouldn’t it be funny if he should get caught right here, in this room? They say a murderer always comes back to the scene of his crime.”

All the Phantom’s self-control was required to repress a start. Pinto’s remark, though uttered in bantering tones, was entirely too pointed to have been casual, and the gleam in his eyes testified that his suspicions were aroused.

“I think the Phantom’s talents have been grossly overestimated. When he is caught we shall probably find that he is quite an ordinary mortal. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Trippe?”

The woman started, then mumbled something unintelligible under her breath.

“Well, maybe,” said Pinto. “I’ve got a feeling in my elbow that says he’ll be caught before night, and then we’ll see. He may be an ordinary mortal, but I’ll be mighty interested to know how he got out of this room. Got any ideas on the subject, Mr. Adair?”

The Phantom’s frown masked the swift working of his mind. “Yes, but you will laugh when I tell you what they are. My frank opinion is that the Phantom had nothing whatever to do with this murder.”

Mrs. Trippe stared at the Phantom as if expecting an astounding revelation to fall from his lips.

Patrolman Pinto, too, seemed taken aback. A little of the color fled from his face, and for an instant his eyes held an uneasy gleam. In a moment, however, he had steadied himself, and a raucous chuckle voiced his opinion of the Phantom’s last statement.

“Say, you amateur dicks make me laugh. The Phantom had nothing to do with it, eh? Well, if he didn’t commit this murder, maybe you’ll tell us who did.”

The Phantom, quiveringly alert, strolled across the floor and back again. There was a bland smile on his lips and the amused twinkle in his eyes concealed the tension under which his mind was laboring.

“That’s asking a lot of an amateur detective, isn’t it?” he suavely inquired. “Maybe it will help you, however, to know how the situation looks to a lay-man. You say you are willing to swear that the murderer was not in the room when you broke in. It is almost equally certain, viewing the matter in the natural order of things, that he could not have left the room between the commission of the crime and your forcible entrance. Therefore——”

He broke off, feeling a violent rush of blood to the head. He had been talking against time, hoping to find a way of diverting Pinto’s suspicions from himself. Suddenly it struck him that his rambling discourse had led him straight to the solution of the mystery. The revelation flashed through his mind like a swift, blinding glare. To hide his agitation he lighted a cigarette. Through the spinning rings of smoke he saw the housekeeper’s ashen face, mouth gaping and eyes staring with fierce intensity.

“Well?” prompted Pinto. His voice was a trifle shaky.

The Phantom was himself again. “Well, as I was about to say, if the murderer was not in the room when you broke in, then the circumstances point straight to you, Mr. Pinto, as the murderer of Sylvanus Gage.”